PureVaultGuide · Updated
Before you sell, trade in or give away your iPhone, you need to make sure your private photos and personal data are truly gone. A factory reset handles most of it, but there are steps to take before and after.
Before erasing anything, make sure your photos and data are safe somewhere else. If you use iCloud Photos, check that everything is synced. If you use a local photo vault like PureVault, create an encrypted transfer file or a recovery export before you reset the device — the vault lives only on your iPhone and will be erased with everything else.
Sign out of your Apple Account in Settings. This also turns off Find My and Activation Lock, which the next owner needs. If you have an Apple Watch paired to this iPhone, unpair it first — unpairing creates a backup of the watch.
Go to Settings › General › Transfer or Reset iPhone › Erase All Content and Settings. This wipes the device's encryption keys, making all data on the flash storage unreadable. On any iPhone with a Secure Enclave (iPhone 5s and later), this is a cryptographic erase: the data is not overwritten byte by byte, but the keys needed to decrypt it are destroyed, which is effectively the same result.
After the erase, the iPhone shows the setup screen. Your photos, app data, messages and settings are gone from the device.
If you deleted photos before the factory reset, they may still be in the Recently Deleted album. The factory reset erases everything including Recently Deleted, so this is only a concern if you skip the full erase. Do not just delete your photos manually and hand over the phone — run Erase All Content and Settings.
Erasing your iPhone does not delete your photos from iCloud. If you want them gone from iCloud too, delete them from Photos on another device while still signed in. If you only want to remove them from the sold device, the factory reset is enough. Remember that photos you shared in messages, shared albums or email remain with the recipients.